[3.5 + E6] Casting higher level spells.

[heavyfuel]

I'm starting an E6 campaign soon, and the world I had in mind wasn't a low-magic world.

Since on E6 you can only cast spells up to lv 3, it wouldn't fit what I had planned.

So I was thinking about using the Unearthed Arcana Spell Point system (basically having a mana pool instead of per-day spells) and adding a cost value for casting spells levels above what you normally would. (Only if your class would allow it, aka, a bard can't cast level 7 spells)

The formula used was a base value of 100GP * number in Fibonacci's sequence^3

Final value (GP)

1 level above: 100 GP
2 levels above: 400 GP
3 levels above: 900 GP
4 levels above: 2500 GP
5 levels above: 6400 GP
6 levels above: 16900 GP


This way, a level 1 sorcerer that can cast level 1 spells, could cast a level 4 spell for 900GP per spell
on E6, a level 6 sorcerer that can cast level 3 spells, could cast a level 9 spell for 16900GP per spell
(His spells known would be predetermined)

I tried to make it rather inexpensive to cast level early spells, but really expensive to cast higher level spells. What do you guys think of the prices? Should they be higher? Lower?

Edit: I tried to copy paste a chart I had made on excel, but it was horribly formated on the forum, so I just put the final values.

[Cheiromancer]

Why do you want to do this?

The usual reason for E6 is to prevent spellcasters from casting higher level spells. If some are needed (e.g. flesh to stone) they are rituals acquired through the use of feats.

[Yora]

I would rather use Incantations than simply making all spells available. Limiting maximum spell level is 90% of what E6 actually does, and in a low-magic game there would be much fewer use for high level spells anyway.

In case you really need a raise dead spell or have some archmage cast a teleportation circle as part of the story, an incantation that requires a very rare and expensive material component can take care of that. And if you make that component rare enough, you can control when the Players can cast the incantation, by limiting when they can find the material component.

[heavyfuel]

Why do you want to do this?

I should've said in the OP, but my idea in the world was to have a war of mages vs everybody. It would only make sense if mages were powerfull enough to cast really high level spells.

I would just give them an excuse to have unlimited supply of the material component like "It's a rock, and they have control of the largest mine so they can just cast meteor swarm all the time" While players would have find other sources to acquire said rock, and that would be expensive.

[Yitzi]

Sounds like what you actually want is normal D&D, not E6. If the mages are to be able to fight everyone else put together on even terms, they'll need the sort of power imbalance that E6 (and many fixes) are meant to remove.

[Tvtyrant]

This is actually more unbalanced than a normal superhero leveled D&D campaign. The mages cannot lost this fight if they are smart. Create Greater Undead + Spectre or Shadow will take out entire armies in a deatholypse. Send them into a city and let the whole world watch.

[Shpadoinkle]

I'm starting an E6 campaign soon, and the world I had in mind wasn't a low-magic world.

These two things are pretty hard to reconcile.

My advice: Either play it normally OR go straight e6 and save this idea for another time. Don't half-ass it like this, it's just going to be a bunch of headaches.